The purpose of this Master thesis is to compare the perception and significance of reference work in two countries, Sweden and Germany. This will be achieved by means of a literature review of previous research literature and public documents and a content analysis of articles from two library journals.A first step was to examine the historical development of reference work in the selected countries. In connection with this there proved to be distinct phases in the discussion regarding reference work. These phases with their specific discourses, themes and emphases reflected and thus later were confirmed in the second part of the study.The results show that despite some similarities there are also quite a few differences in how reference work is perceived in both countries. For Sweden, the idea of reference work was introduced relatively early.

The aim of this essay is to study how parents to children with learning disability experences the support they get from society. My main question has been: what kind of support offer does society offer this parents? What is good and what is less satisfactory in this support? The study is based on a qualitative method. Five parents with children who has learning disabilities has been used as base. The material has been analysed with a narrative, hernmeneutic perspective.The study concludes that the parents, use in this case, find that society does not offer the necessary understanding for their problem of their family.

CSR, Corporate Social Responsibility, has become increasingly important in a globalised world where the responsibilities of companies and governments are somewhat blurry. The textile industry is an industry where long supply chains and raw material production in developing countries are factors adding to the complexity and difficulties of solving ethical issues. Cotton production faces many environmental, social and financial challenges in the value chain. Therefore this case study takes a closer look at five Nordic home textile companies, Ikea, Hemtex, S Group, Moko and Finlayson, and how these companies choose their cotton related CSR tools and communicate their work on this area. These companies are of various sizes and therefore the resources for CSR work are also different, as well as the perceived values for working with CSR.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate if there are environments that use some kind of central authentication system within institutions/schools. The hypothesis is that an institution not using a form of central authentication service has more need for maintenance and as such is considered a higher cost for the organization. The gathering of data has been done through interviews with technical personal at Blekinge Tekniska Högskola and Linköpings Universitet. Based on the technical background of the authors, and the system limited to discussing Windows and UNIX operating systems, a discussion and analysis of the systems working today has been done, with emphasize on the hypothesis..

AbstractLarge states are not as interdependent as small countries are. Due to the extent of the home market, producers in large countries can sell the greater part of their products at home. Accordingly large countries become less dependent of other states. Large states are consequently in a better position to promote their self- interests internationally than smaller states are. Applying this reasoning on a large state such as France I come to conclude that she probably exerts this policy of self- interest in an area like free trade.

Uppsatsen är en studie av hur förvaltningsideal påverkar vid rekrytering av chefer till den offentliga förvaltningen och hur förvaltningsidealet är under förändring. Den ger också en kort genomgång av de två vanligaste förvaltningsidealen, Weber och New Public Management, men presenterar även ett tredje alternativ kallat New Public Service.Genom att studera vilka typer av chefer som kommuner önskar rekrytera har vi härigenom observerat vilket förvaltningsideal som styr vid rekryteringsprocessen och om detta ideal är under förändring.Vår metod är huvudsakligen baserad på kvalitativa intervjuer med personalchefer i den kommunala förvaltningen.I uppsatsen stärks vår hypotes om att den kommunala förvaltningen rör sig ifrån ett New Public Management inriktat ideal, som under 1980-talet och 1990-talet haft stor inverkan på kommuner, och att förvaltningen inte strävar mot ett weberianskt ideal utan istället söker sig mot ett mera individ- och medborgarcentrerat ideal som kan liknas vid New Public Service..

The purpose with our essay was to examine which clients/patients get treatment for alcohol problems from either health care units or social service units. We also wanted to find out how staff in these units considers the importance of social background in the assessment of treatment. The questions we have focused are: How do the clients/patients get in contact with the units? How does staff in these units consider the importance of social background in the assessment of treatment? How is the social background like for the present clients/patients? To fulfil the purpose with our investigation and to get answers to our questions, we performed an explorative examination and applied a qualitative method in the form of a semi-structured interview with six persons. The investigation showed that clients/patients get in contact with the units by looking for treatment by themselves or by relatives and other organisations.

Sammanfattning saknas..

The purpose with this study has been, based on different public and private procurement conditions, to measure if there are any significant differences in the business relations between public- and private institutional kitchens. Furthermore, to observe what important influencing factors there are to maintain and develop a relationship between a producer and customer. The result of the analysis shows that there are important factors that influences on the trust in the relationship between a producer and customer. These factors are product- and service exchange, communication, strategic purchase and social exchange. In this examination we have showed that there are differences in the relationship between public- and private customers.

The purpose of this essay is to analyze and understand the effects that a recession can have on a company?s marketing department. In times of a recession most companies have less means to promote their products to their target market and to build their brand. This means that cutting the marketing budget will show some effects on today?s way of marketing.

The key purpose of this research has been trying to understand, and study how assyrian/syriac youth create their identity under the influence of two or several different cultures. We have also looked upon how different factors such as history, religion, language, family and school play a role in the youths identity development.We have used a qualitative method in our study where we have interviewed six assyrian/syriac youth. Because of their Christian faith the assyrian/syriac group has been forced to migrate from their countries to different parts around the world. In the new countries the group has been forced to create and live in a diasporaculture. The city Södertälje in Sweden has developed to become a metropole for this ethnic group where they have founded a substantial diasporaculture.

This qualitative interview study examines the shared and discrepant experiences that nine professionals, three from each field of psychiatry, social service, and housing have from working with people with hoarding disorder, and their view on help. The main difficulty when working with hoarding disorder is described as lack of insight and understanding of the severity and consequences of the disorder among people with the disability. Professionals highlight the importance of proper diagnosis and cooperation among disciplinary teams working with hoarding disorder. Approaches differ regarding the issue of how to best help a person with hoarding disorder, especially as the emphasis of autonomy becomes more prevalent. The landlords who were interviewed expressed the hoarders? need of help from the society, whereas the social service interviewees accentuated voluntariness and motivation as a favorable long-term management.

This thesis presents a new way of providing library users with reference services, namely chat (text based digital reference service in real time). Our research questions focus on the role of reference service, a comparison of chat reference to other reference forms, and the interest for real-time, digital reference. Our literature review covered the areas of digital reference and reference theory, the results of which showed that an ongoing debate hardly exists among Swedish librarians on the topic of reference work. We interviewed librarians from the three different Swedish chat reference projects existing at the time of our study. Most interviewees were very positive about chat reference.

The need for auditing originates from the agency problem that arises due to the separation of ownership and control in companies. The purpose of the audit is to increase credibility of the financial statements that management uses to communicate with owners and other stakeholders. In order for the audit to fulfill its purpose a certain level of quality needs to be obtained. The auditor can also be seen as a provider of a commercial service in which service quality is important. Audit quality can thus be separated into technical quality, which is defined as the probability that the auditor both discovers and reports a breach in the client?s accounting system, and service quality, which relates to the provision of services in general.

The study reported has been conducted in care service guided by the Swedish law LSS( LSS- act concerning support and service for the disabled). The aim of this study is to examine the experiences of the personnel who have attended the Taktipro introductory course with special focus on how they describe the possible effects this may have had on their daily attendance to their special needs users.The method used is a qualitative method of enquiry, based on interview questions sent by mail to all the participants of the Taktipro introductory course. The result shows that the personnel have a positive view on skills in progress and that this program has facilitated the contact between personnel and their special needs users. An awareness about the importance of physical contact has also been revealed as well as an awareness of their own impact on situations at work. The result also indicates that the personnel feel that they have been able to improve the well being for the special needs users. .